Where good taste, clear and distinct ideas, and graceful modulations tend to be viewed with lowering suspicion.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

macgiver he ain't

"I found him very engaged. I think he's looking for some answers, and the impression I had was there will be some changes," said retired general Wayne Downing in an interview with NBC's Today show. "I think you're going to see some new things come out..."

...of the presidential anus, General? Are we supposed to rest easy hearing that he's allegedly "engaged?" And what's with the charade that Bush, like some centralized Deciding Mechanism, will be inputting these multiple data perspectives from these diverse sources, then what...grabbing a brew and a bag of pretzels and watching The Passion of PeeWee's Playhouse as he chokes?

Wouldn't it be a healthier tack for USian media - and for its purported target audience - if it told us that a whole broad set of helpful and competent action figures were going to be working on this over the holidays, consulting with Santa when he drops in, surviving on giant slabs of Texas beef jerky while lucubrating?

If not healthier, wouldn't it be more like what democratic decision-making used to be supposed to be? What need is being served by this tale of a sole decider who "listens attentively" even as he goes about braying nonsense that wouldn't pass for topical knowledge in a 5th grade classroom (in Canada or Italy - USian classrooms are exempt from this comment)? Are we to look forward to Time/Newsweek covers of Mr. Bush, captured telephotically as he walks alone among the trees/sits alone at his desk illuminated by a single lamp/rides around and around on a tiny tooting train alone, brooding on the new way forward?

Bonus rhetorical question:

Why does David Jackson of USA Today feel compelled to perpetuate the populating of The Presidential Sim's world with "this young Iraqi democracy" and like phantasms?

The need being served, whatever it is, reveals a strategic message prioritization: it is more deeply important for us to believe Mr. Bush has interiority -- that a consciousness actually fills that fleshly form -- than that a wide cross-section of USian minds tapping into a multitude of complex tasks and needs can hack together a sensible emergency action plan. This (1) averts coup hysteria during Christmastide; (2) preserves the illusion that what's needed is some epiphanic Soundbite Solution; (3) leaves the responsibility for the entire mess squarely and solely on the shoulders of poor George.